Stunt casting famous actors used to be a proven strategy for any game publisher that wanted to get more eyes on their respective titles.
It was all the rage in the noughties, with star-studded blockbusters like The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, Fallout 3, True Crime: Streets of LA, Fable II, Brutal Legend and Call of Duty: World at War all vying to have most impressive roll call. After a while, it stopped being a big deal and was rendered somewhat commonplace, with Gary Oldman alone appearing in at least three of those listed games.
Unfortunately, in many instances, the celebrity guests sounded utterly checked out and you got the impression that they were only it for quick and easy cash. It’s unlikely that the A-listers ever intended on putting such lowly voicework on their resumes anyway, so it would hardly be damaging to their careers if they phoned it in. The most infamous example of this being Peter Dinklage’s legendarily apathetic performance in Destiny, which was so listless that Bungie ended up having to patch it out of existence.
This fad of attaching household names to a release, just for the sake of it, has since fallen out of fashion and you only really see Hollywood VIPs popping up nowadays if they’re actually enthusiastic about a project (ala Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077). Which is obviously preferable because it means that we now live in a golden age of video game acting, with committed professionals— like Laura Bailey, Troy Baker, Ashly Burch and Yuri Lowenthal — making it an art form unto itself.
Supermassive Games are among just a small handful of developers still putting stock in the notion that enlisting celebrities will imbue their titles with a sense of prestige. Ever since Hayden Panettiere and Peter Stormare donned the mo-cap suits for Until Dawn, this Guilford-based team have been sure to cast at least one recognisable face in each of their subsequent releases.
Man of Medan had Shawn Ashmore, Little Hope featured Will Poulter, and Ashley Tisdale’s likeness was plastered all over the marketing for House of Ashes. Meanwhile, their most recent offering, The Quarry, utilised a pleasing mix of horror veterans (such as Lance Hendrickson and Lin Shaye) as well as up-and-coming young talent.
For their next outing, The Devil in Me — which, incidentally, will be the Season 1 finale of The Dark Pictures Anthology — Supermassive lucked out and managed to recruit a pre-Oscar-nomination Jessie Buckley. Portraying Kate, the presenter of a sensationalist true crime docuseries, she is one of the five protagonists that you are able to control during the branching-narrative game, and her fate is entirely in your hands.
Speaking to Flickering Myth about Buckley’s involvement, Tom Heaton, Director of The Devil in Me, said: “We were really fortunate to get Jessie before she landed her Academy Award nomination. Looking at the work she had already done (in things like Fargo, I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Chernobyl) you could tell she was a star on the rise and we’re so proud to have her associated with our game.”
However, while The Lost Daughter actor may be a pro on stage and screen, it apparently took some time for her to acclimatise to a completely new medium.
Heaton continued: “One of the first things we discovered about Jessie, on her very first day, is that she had never really watched a horror movie. Certainly not in the last twenty years at least. And not only that, but she’d never played a video game either! So, she was completely in the dark and didn’t really understand what we were doing.
“It was a steep learning curve, because working on a game is totally different to working on a movie or on a TV show. For one thing, it’s a much faster pace. Not to mention, we were also presenting her with a branching-narrative script, which is very complicated if you’ve never seen one before.”
Pantomiming what it’s like to receive one of these hefty documents, Heaton indicated that they are massive stacks of paper. He continued: “In fact, we don’t even show actors [physical] scripts anymore because it’s just so daunting.
“Instead, we get them to look at the scenes on a [flowchart] screen where it is much easier for them to understand. And even when we get around to filming, we have to constantly reorient the performers, take them through different read-throughs and do scenes again in different ways.
“Eventually actors come to understand and even enjoy it. It’s fascinating for them to redo scenes with different emotions and dialogue, but it does take some getting used to.”
Of course, branching narratives aren’t only problematic for those who appear in front of the camera, as they pose a big challenge for everybody else in the development team as well.
When asked about the logistical nightmare of mapping out these changeable stories, Heaton said: “We’ve gotten quite good at it now. We have flowchart tools and various techniques that make it easier. We can essentially play through the games, and try all of their different paths, in a lo-fi format before we’ve even done any recording. So we know that they work long in advance of filming.”
While the actual process of putting together these anthology releases is a fierce undertaking (especially with all the overlapping threads that you’ve got to keep track of), there’s another thing that, by Heaton’s own admission, can be quite painful. Specifically, it can be hard for the developers to put so much hard work and effort into producing content that many players will never see.
Innate to the concept of a branching-narrative is the fact that some paths need to be mutually exclusive. And so, if you go down one route, then another must inevitably be walled off. For instance, a character’s premature demise in Until Dawn could stop you from visiting sprawling environments later on, whilst taking a wrong turn in The Quarry will put certain collectables forever out of your reach.
When broaching the topic with Heaton, we bring up a particularly memorable example from Man of Medan. In that title, it is possible for Shawn Ashmore’s Conrad to bow out very early in the story, by ditching his friends at the first sight of danger and escaping via speedboat. If he does, then the yuppie will not be seen again until a post credits sequence, meaning that you will miss out on huge swathes of his gameplay.
Reflecting on this, Heaton said: “Yes, it is a bit difficult for us to make our content skippable, because everyone has their favourite scenes. When you have a great sequence, like that bit with Conrad and the glamour girl in Man of Medan, you do kind of want everyone to see it.
“But that’s not how it works with a branching game. Everyone is supposed to get a unique experience and that means characters have to be expendable, secrets must be hidden and it needs to be possible for scenes to be [circumvented].”
The director also revealed that Conrad’s early departure was meant to refute a persistent criticism levelled at branching-path games, namely that they’re all just smoke and mirrors. He continued: “There was a time when people would dismiss these titles as a con. They would say ‘It’s just the illusion of choice and the illusion that your actions matter’.
“I think we’ve answered this criticism with some of our newer games. One of the reasons we decided to make Conrad [expendable] so early on in Man of Medan is to essentially say: ‘Look! You can’t say that about us. Our star can leave the game right at the beginning.’ That was a very bold, deliberate statement on our part.
“The trick is to make sure that you find a way of giving your audience [substitute] material that’s also very strong. Nowadays, we try as much as possible to offer alternative content when a player ends up taking a divergent path. We try and make it so that all the routes have compelling material.
“So, it doesn’t break my heart if you miss some content, because you can always play it again or talk to your friends and find out what happened for them. It generates conversation in that sense.”
Given that the majority of entries in The Dark Pictures Anthology (including The Devil in Me) are based on slasher movies, death is an inseparable part of their DNA.
It is therefore important that characters can pop their clogs at any random point and that their deaths have a meaningful impact. The story must be irreversibly altered by their absence, scenes have to be cut and paths need to be permanently blocked off. Otherwise, it’s pointless.
Depending on your disposition towards gore and bloodshed, there are two antithetical ways you can respond to this. If you’re feeling like a benevolent puppet master, then you can vigilantly safeguard those placed in your care and try to keep everyone alive until the end credits. This is generally seen as the more ambitious way to go, as it’s harder to make all the “right” decisions and nail every single QTE in a single play-through.
Alternatively, you could go out of your way to be the most sadistic overload possible and actively steer your charges towards a messy end. You know, for shits and giggles!
Acknowledging that different players have contradictory goals, Heaton said: “Some people do like to try and keep everyone alive. Others prefer to take on the role of a director, picking and choosing who they want to kill off.
“Which makes sense if you think about it. When you are watching a horror movie, especially a slasher, you are in it for the deaths. You’d be dissatisfied if there weren’t any good ones.
“In fact, one of the ways we design The Dark Pictures titles is by coming up with a ‘golden path’. That’s basically one version of the story that is satisfying and follows a traditional horror structure.
“We try not to call it the golden path, because that implies it’s privileged in some way, but it’s just a [play through] that is compelling from beginning to end. And usually that version of the story has deaths scattered throughout, often with just a lone survivor by the end.
“So it’s definitely something that we keep in mind. By all means, get them killed. It’s up to you and a very legitimate way to approach the game.”
However you intend on playing, The Devil in Me will be released on Friday the 18th November for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4 and PS5. You can read Flickering Myth’s preview here.
Harrison Abbott
